Stranded with the Cyborg (Cy-Ops Sci-fi Romance Book 1) Read online

  Penelope Aaron, the former Terran president’s daughter, regrets how she got Agent Brock Mann booted from the security force. But now that she’s an interplanetary ambassador about to embark on her first diplomatic mission, she still doesn’t want him tagging along. Especially since he seems to be stronger, faster, more muscled, and sexier than she remembers. And pretending to be her husband? This mission couldn’t get more impossible!

  Ten years ago Penelope Isabella Aaron had been a pain in Brock Mann’s you-know-what. Much has changed in a decade: “PIA” as he code-named her, has grown up and is about to attend her first Alliance of Planets summit conference, and Brock has been transformed into a cyborg after a near-fatal attack. Now a secret agent with Cyber Operations, a covert paramilitary organization, Brock gets called in, not when the going gets tough, but when the going gets impossible. So when he’s unexpectedly assigned to escort Penelope to the summit meeting, he balks at babysitting a prissy ambassador. But after a terrorist bombing, a crash landing on a hostile planet, and a growing attraction to his protectee, Operation: PIA may become his most impossible assignment yet.

  Stranded with the Cyborg

  Copyright © September 2015 by Cara Bristol

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  eISBN : 978-0-9961452-3-7

  Editor: Kate Richards

  Copy Editor: Nanette Sipe

  Cover Artist: Sweet ’N Spicy Designs

  Formatting by Wizards in Publishing

  Published in the United States of America

  Cara Bristol

  http://www.carabristol.com

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  Stranded with the Cyborg

  by

  Cara Bristol

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Books by Cara Bristol

  About Cara Bristol

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  “What was so urgent it couldn’t wait until I got back from Darius 4?” Brock flung himself into the wide sensa-chair, which conformed to the angles and lines of his body to provide optimal support and comfort. He would have preferred an android pleasure worker fit her realistic feminine form around him rather than a piece of furniture—as he’d been about to experience when the Cyber Operations director’s summons had come through. “You’re the one who insisted I take respite time.”

  “Drink?” Carter punched a button on his console, a cabinet slid open, and he removed a decanter. After pouring two shots of bronze liqueur, he shoved one across the desk.

  Brock’s internal warning system flashed an alert. “What’s the bad news?”

  “Why do you assume that?”

  “Whenever you break out the Cerinian brandy, you’re either trying to butter me up or soften the blow.” He eyed the man who’d been his friend since they’d served together in the Terran Central Protection Office thirteen years ago. Carter’s blank expression betrayed nothing, but the brandy sang like a yellow songbird.

  The director knocked back his shot then thumped his chest with his fist. Cerinian brandy went down smooth until the afterburn lit your throat on fire. Or it did to one who was unaltered. Brock swallowed his and felt only slight warmth.

  “I have an assignment for you,” Carter said, his voice hoarse from the liqueur. “The Association of Planets Summit is on Malodonus next week. There’s been a threat against…the Terran ambassador.” He hesitated like he expected Brock to short-circuit a computer chip.

  After five years without a day off, Brock had been ordered to take R & R or be reassigned to desk duty. His irritation with the edict had been relieved somewhat when he’d arrived at the Darius 4 pleasure resort and discovered the android sex workers were almost lifelike.

  First Carter told him to go then he recalled him. Brock wouldn’t blow any gaskets, but he was irked. Quit jerking me around. “What government official hasn’t received a threat? It’s part of the job. What’s so special about this case?” He shifted in the sensa-chair so its fingers could massage his lower spine.

  “According to intel, Lamis-Odg is involved.”

  Lamis-Odg had contributed nothing significant or positive toward the advancement of society in thousands of years yet opposed the AOP’s goal to draw the peoples of the galaxy into an alliance. Historically, the backwater planet had been more bluster than bite but, in recent years, had resorted to terrorism to intimidate its adversaries.

  Brock flexed his right hand. “How certain is the threat?”

  “It’s being treated as a level two.”

  Level one threats most often represented the rantings of a lunatic who would not act on the threat—or who lacked the means to do so. In a level two, a specific target had been named by a perpetrator who might have the means to carry it out. Level three was considered probable, and level four was imminent.

  Call me when it gets to level four.

  Carter spread his hands. “I’m told the CPO has intercepted a transmission indicating the ambassador was recently placed on Lamis-Odg’s enemies of the state list.”

  “So no specific plot has been identified?”

  “No. The risk was bumped from level one to two because she is an ambassador and other intercepted communiqués suggest Lamis-Odg has become more active.”

  “So why doesn’t the Central Protection Office handle it?” Guarding government and diplomatic personnel fell into their bailiwick. When he’d been a CPO agent, he’d managed level two and three risks all the time. While a two should be taken seriously, it didn’t require the specialized abilities of the covert Cyber Operations force.

  “The ambassador has refused protection.”

  Figures. “Why?”

  “She has a meeting with the Xenian emperor to convince him to send a delegate to the Summit and join the AOP.”

  Brock scanned his memory banks for information on the small planet in the Omicron sector. Like Lamis-Odg, Xenia had no interest in joining the AOP. Unlike Lamis-Odg, the Xenians weren’t hostile or violent—they were pacifists who shied away from conflict and interplanetary politics.

  Carter continued, “She fears showing up with a security detail will send the message there’s something to be wary of.”

  “Isn’t there?” Brock said drily, and then added, “If the ambassador has refused security, then I don’t see why it’s our problem.”

  “I was asked for a favor.”

  The bad premonition Brock had gotten when he’d received the summons, and again when Carter had broken out the brandy, grew stronger. “Suppose you cut to the chase.”
>
  “The ambassador is Mikala Aaron’s daughter.”

  Sonofabitch. “Pia?”

  Carter nodded.

  Pia. Short for Penelope Isabella Aaron, or, as Brock had code-named his former protectee, Pain in the Ass. Every member of the Terran First Family had a designated CPO agent assigned to him or her.

  An adolescent Pia had done her damnedest to dodge him. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d caught her attempting to sneak out of the executive residence unescorted. Nor had he appreciated her practical jokes and dirty tricks. When her attempts to shake him had failed, she’d lodged false charges of sexual misconduct.

  Shot at numerous times during his career, Brock had been seriously wounded twice and almost fatally once. Pia had been his waterloo—or would have been if Mikala Aaron, aware of her daughter’s machinations, hadn’t stepped in.

  Brock folded his arms across his chest. “It doesn’t have to be me. Get somebody else.”

  “President Aaron has requested you.”

  “Former President Aaron. She’s a civilian now. And we don’t report to the president anyway.”

  Carter sighed. “I could order you to do it.”

  As Cy-Ops director, Carter was Brock’s superior—technically. But the organization officially did not exist, and commanding a band of rogues who operated outside the law required finesse, rather than blunt orders. “You won’t,” Brock said.

  Carter inhaled, held his breath for a moment, and then exhaled. “No. I’m asking you to do it—as a favor to me.”

  Favors, like shit, rolled downhill.

  “Don’t do this to me,” he said, arguing against the inevitable. He owed Carter his life. If not for the director, Brock would have died in a military hospital or been left a shell of man, a chunk of his brain gone, an arm and two legs missing. Carter’s secret force had whisked him from the intensive care unit to a clandestine cybermed installation.

  Brock had been in no condition to consent to the treatment he’d been subjected to, but if he had been aware, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He wanted to live. Cybermed docs had injected him with nanocytes, tiny robotic cells, and implanted a microcomputer in his brain to control them. He’d been fitted with prosthetic limbs. Under the influence of the biomimetic particles, he’d regenerated human muscle, tendon, and skin. Excruciatingly painfully, but it had happened. They’d kept him unconscious for most of it.

  When he’d awakened, his body—and, to some degree, his mind—had been rebuilt. He’d been transformed into a bigger, stronger, more resilient Brock. And then Carter had recruited him as a cyberoperative.

  Cyber Operations didn’t respond when the going got tough, Cy-Ops responded when the going got impossible. When your only choice was to kiss your ass good-bye, that’s when Cy-Ops moved in.

  Calling a cyberoperative to escort an ambassador to a summit meeting? A ridiculous waste of manpower. Pia as protectee? Impossible. Maybe Cy-Ops’s involvement made sense in a twisted way.

  “Ten years have passed. Penelope is different now,” Carter said.

  Brock doubted that. “Does she know about me?”

  “That you’re a cyborg? Of course not. She hasn’t been told anything about the program or even that you’re the one who’s been assigned to her.”

  “Yeah, spring it on her. That will go over well.” He could envision the tantrum, and, after she calmed down, the scheme she would devise to circumvent the decision. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been emerging from his quarters half-dressed, a triumphant smile tilting her lips. Shortly thereafter, two fellow agents had come to arrest him.

  President Aaron had exonerated him, the transcripts from the investigation had been sealed, and he’d been offered reassignment. Instead, he’d taken a position with an anti-terrorist investigative organization. His unit got attacked; his fellow operatives had died. Carter, who’d been working with Cy-Ops all along, had swooped in and saved his ass.

  “I’m not saying I’ll do it, but, hypothetically, if I had a computer meltdown and agreed, what would be my cover story? I couldn’t tag along as her bodyguard because that would unsettle the Xenians.”

  Carter poured another shot of Cerinian brandy and downed it. He met Brock’s gaze dead-on. “You’d accompany Ambassador Aaron as her husband.”

  “Oh, hell no!”

  * * * *

  “Oh, hell no!” Penelope glared at her mother. “A husband? Are you crazy?”

  “Not a real husband,” said Mikala. “A bodyguard.”

  Penelope shook her head. “The Xenians are wary as it is. If they think I need a bodyguard, it will derail any chance of building an alliance. That’s why I rejected the Central Protection Office detail.”

  “You’ve been listed by Lamis-Odg.”

  “Who don’t they want to kill?” Penelope dismissed the threat with a snort. “They’re a small planet of crackpots halfway across the galaxy. Anyone who disagrees with anything they believe is targeted. ”

  “They can’t be ignored, Penelope. Their support is growing. They’ve been able to recruit the disgruntled and mentally unbalanced from many different planets, train them, and send them home. They’re like that malignancy eradicated in the 23rd century.”

  “Cancer?”

  “Yes, like cancer. They invade the host cell and turn it against itself. Lamis-Odg sympathizers are everywhere.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “I served as President of Terra United for ten years. I have classified information you haven’t had access to.”

  “I have a greater chance of dying by having my PeeVee malfunction and crash than I do of being killed by a terrorist. I’m not going to let the specter of some lunatic fringe organization with imaginary grievances prevent me from doing my job. There’s no way I can meet with the Xenian emperor if I bring a bodyguard.”

  “I had a hunch you’d say that.” Her mother lifted her chin. “If you don’t agree to the protection, you’ll be removed from the diplomatic mission.”

  “With all due respect, Mother, you don’t have authority over the Department of Interplanetary Affairs. I’m going to Xenia and to the Summit on Malodonus alone.”

  “Don’t believe that I don’t have influence because I’m no longer in office. Many people still owe me favors. I will contact the Minister of IA and have you reassigned.”

  When your mother was ex-president, parental meddling occurred at a whole new level.

  If she’d been a little less mature, Penelope might have stomped her foot and yelled, “You’re not the boss of me,” like she’d done when she was a teenager. Instead, she took a deep, calming breath and released it silently. “As you wish, Mother.”

  Mikala clasped Penelope’s shoulders and kissed her forehead. “I know you find security an encumbrance, but it’s for the best.” She stepped back. “Your bodyguard will arrive tomorrow afternoon to escort you.”

  Chapter Two

  The ascender delivered Penelope and her luggage to the garage bright and early the next morning. The illumination came from solar powered subterranean lighting, not because the actual sun had risen. That wouldn’t occur for a couple more hours. The conversation with her mother had necessitated an earlier-than-scheduled departure. A bug out. By the time the bodyguard arrived, Penelope would be on her way to Xenia, out of range of parental meddling.

  She appreciated her mother’s concern, but the negotiations with the Xenians and the AOP Summit that would follow were her first major assignments since she’d been appointed ambassador six months ago. No one else’s mommy interfered. Although she was the youngest member of Terra’s diplomatic corps, she had earned her position, damn it. She had graduated early with an advanced degree in interplanetary relations and paid her dues as desk jockey. Nobody had logged more overtime with Interplanetary Affairs. After courting the Xenians for months, she’d finagled an invitation to meet with the emperor! They’d never been willing to talk to the AOP before. Her success had led to her appointment as ambassador so she
would have the appropriate diplomatic status to follow through. Despite her hard work, rumors had circulated she’d been appointed not out of merit, but through nepotism, familial connections to the former president.

  If her mother butted in and assigned her a bodyguard, it would fuel the gossip and undermine the mission. As observant as they were cautious, the Xenians would view a Central Protection Office agent with suspicion. How could she prove it was safe to join the AOP if she arrived with a security detail?

  But she would be extra vigilant and careful. Though the threat was remote, it was still out there.

  At stall 2105, which corresponded to her apartment number, she found her white PeeVee. As she approached, the lights came on and the door unlocked. She stowed her luggage in the trunk and then slipped into the control seat of the Personal Transportation Vehicle.

  “Please verify identity,” said the PeeVee’s computer.

  Penelope palmed the bio ignition scanner on the dashboard. “Take me to the regional shuttle port.”

  “Penelope Isabella Aaron. Identity confirmed. You are not scheduled to depart until 14:00.”

  “Override. Take me to the port now.”

  “The most direct route or the fastest?”

  “Fastest.” The sooner she got out of Dodge, the better.

  “Prepare for departure.”

  Although computer-controlled and operated PeeVees rarely crashed, an automatic restraint folded over her, strapping her to the seat. The engine hummed, and the PeeVee reversed out of the stall. “Would you care for music?” the computer asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you require stops along the way?”

  “No. Go directly to the shuttle port.”

  While her PeeVee navigated through the traffic, Penelope reviewed her flight documents on her PerComm. She’d catch a short moon-jumper flight to the Interplanetary Shuttle Port, where she would board a charter to Xenia. If all went well, one of its representatives would accompany her to the AOP Summit as her guest. A feather in her cap. No one could question her merits, then.